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TurnKey Linux 11 released (part one)

Ladies and gentlemen, part 1 of the TurnKey Linux 11 release is now officially out, including 45 new images based on Ubuntu 10.04.1. We pushed out the 11.0 release candidates 3 months ago, and with the help of the community have tested the images and resolved the few remaining issues.

Part 1 mostly refreshes the existing roster of appliances in the library. In the upcoming part 2 we'll release the new appliances the community has been helping us develop over the last year. This will roughly double the size of the library.

For headless deployments without a console, it's possible to pre-seed answers to first boot configuration questions.

/etc under git: Automatic revision control of /etc using etckeeper, as suggested by Jeremiah Snapp. If a configuration change you made breaks something, just roll it back!

LVM snapshots: Fixed LVM snapshots by adding 10% unallocated disk space to default LVM configuration. This will make it easier to add support for atomic filesystem backups in upcoming versions of TKLBAM.

Amazon EC2 / TurnKey Hub related changes:

Hub does TKL 11: TurnKey Hub now deploys TurnKey Linux 11 images by default, though support for older legacy images is still available to ease migration.

Basic pre-launch configuration: No more having to fiddle with the default passwords after an instance launches. TurnKey Hub now supports pre-seeding appliance configuration before launch. This makes up for not having console access that would usually be required for first boot configuration.

TKLBAM pre-initialization: No more having to cut and paste your Hub APIKEY to initialize TKLBAM. The TurnKey Hub pre-initializes TKLBAM automatically when the instance is first launched.

Upgradeable Kernels: We've figured out how to make it easy update the kernel.

Kernel upgrades were previously not supported on Amazon EC2, because each Amazon Machine Image (AMI) had to be associated with a specific Amazon Kernel Image (AKI). Now instead of associating the image to a specific kernel, we associate it with a special EC2 compatible bootloader (pv-grub), which can bootstrap whatever kernel is configured from within the system (e.g., security fix).

Comments

The etckeeper feature looks very interesting, it's nice to know it's there on the core. Sometimes we are so desperate to see an official TKL release that it's easy to forget all the hard work behind. When I read this kind of post, you can see all that have happened in the backstage to get to this wonderful release.

I don't know if I'm just overly optimistic by nature or what, but releases are always more difficult to execute than I can anticipate. I told Alon I figured it wouldn't take more than a day or two to update the web site for the release. Ha! More like a week or two. You would think I'd have learned not to underestimate the effort involved by now. Oh well.

BTW, I think you're sort of on the official TKL team member by now, so I'll have to return a good portion of that KUDOs back to sender, before the second part of the release comes out with some of the best new additions being based on your TKLPatches. Otherwise all this self congratulatory salutation could prove embarrassing!

I have been on a very steep linux learning curve for the past 12 mths and am gobsmacked at the sheer effort you have put into the Turnkey library... I truly find you all amazing and inspiring. I have fallen in love with Linux and since finding your site awhile ago i have been waiting for the TKLBAM to come to fruition.... I have to go to perth for work but am going to set up my whole network based on your gear when i get back....That'll be linux, Win XP, Win7 and maybe some old macs as well cos i got Lucid running on my lil girls old Blue n white G3 for the hell of it ;)

I'll keep popping back to praise ya and hope i can actually contribute once my skillset has matured...

John/Jai, many thanks for the encouragement. For me personally TurnKey is about more than a great collection of things. I'm a pretty hardcore Linux geek myself, but I have to admit I don't find the tech itself nearly as as awesome as the people in our community. When we're developing a new feature or fixing an existing one to work just right, they're our inspiration. There's something about the gift culture of open source that draws out the most wonderful, warm, generous people I've had the pleasure of interacting with in the last decade or so of my online experiences.

I saw you were giving Adrian feedback on his Gitorious TKLPatch, which is the basis for the upcoming official appliance. If you come across any issues or think of ideas for improvement don't hesitate to share them with us so we can work that into the upcoming release.

BTW, as a developer myself I consider the upcoming TurnKey Gitorious appliance to be one of the most exciting new additions to the library. Adrian really hit it out of the park with that one.

Thanks for volunteering! I think it would probably be a good idea to upload bundles of beta ISOs to sourceforge and let the community help us test them. If we do that we'll announce the availability on the TKLPatch forum threads.

Welcome, I'm guessing you're new to TurnKey. We've actually had about 5 or so releases before. Before TKL 11 there was 2009.10-2 maintenance release batch (April 2010), 2009.10 release batch (October 2009), 2009.02 batch (February 2009) when we first introduced TurnKey Core, and then a bunch of individual appliance releases dating to our first appliance release in September 2008.

One of the things that I love most about TKL (besides the awesome community and engaged core dev team) is the level of inovation. Not only are there a huge new range of appliances on the way, but the attention to detail is awesome, for example the addition of etckeeper - although in honesty I think I'll need to have a bit of a read and find out how to work it!

I was keeping /etc under automatic revision control for years with a bunch of adhoc scripts I wrote until we recently discovered etckeeper. It's pretty neat!

Regarding the attention paid to details, I think it flows naturally from our views on how TurnKey adds value.

In a way, open source is the ideal Do It Yourself resource. A literal treasure trove of tens of thousands of parts you are free to explore and tinker with. For those of us that enjoy messing around under the technological hood, it's the ideal playing ground.

On the flip side it's easy to get lost/distracted by the endless possibilities and detail. Especially for newcomers. I think the default is to start out by feeling a bit overwhelmed. What really gets you isn't the stuff that works, it's the frustration from the small stuff that doesn't. Death by a thousand paper cuts they call it.

And that's exactly where TurnKey comes in. We give users the confidence to take advantage of open source by taking care of all those small details that would usually trip them up. Every good experience strengthens their confidence.

We give users the confidence to take advantage of open source by taking care of all those small details that would usually trip them up. Every good experience strengthens their confidence.

This sums up my experience with Linux/TKL exactly! Through my wins with TKL I have been able to become quite confortable with Linux. I rarely use Webmin now, but that was one of the components that made it really easy for a newb to make a start :)

Deployed the StatusNet appliance via ESXi (from ISO, not vmx or ovx) at our school at the earliest opportunity. Very nice work by everyone involved. Setup was a breeze. We're looking at how it can be applied to enhance productivity in an organization with 100 or so people. Two aspects interest me: how it can postively affect communication within the organization; and, how it can be used as a tool to enhance learning and instruction - particularly for a population among whom many struggle with language - and I'm putting my money on how it particularly helps rhetoric.

Great job - so far my only setback is sending out invitations. I haven't read the docs yet, but it didn't send to the addresses specified as easily as it wanted me to think it would.

But feel free to make a suggestion (probably best for a new topic in the 'general' section of the forum). It's probably most useful if you outline what you are looking for and provide as much info as possible and some links too! TBH though it probably won't happen anytime soon.

OTOH, how about you develop a TKLPatch for it? If it's good and you're quick, you never know the devs may be able to squeeze it into pt2 of the v11 release!

This is an old blog post which relates to a really old release. As such, it isn't super relevant anymore. As it seems to be attracting a lot of spam posts, I'm going to lock it. Please feel free to comment elsewhere or better still sign up and start a new thread.